


the which no balm can cure (heart-blood)

by seventeencrows



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: it doesn't mention that "shooting distance" counts as "closer", minkowski and jacobi pretend they have absolutely nothing in common, the proverb tells you exactly where to keep your enemies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 15:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12039030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeencrows/pseuds/seventeencrows
Summary: go to the store, buy some more—it’s only a countdown if you reach the end, isn’t it? (or, a trust fall in zero-g)





	the which no balm can cure (heart-blood)

**Author's Note:**

> feeling like shit which means it's time to write some more garbage. getting really tired of my current writing style so branching out into other ones if only for novelty instead of quality
> 
> title is from king richard ii: “pierced to the soul with slander's venomed spear, the which no balm can cure but his heart-blood which breathed this poison.”

_one bottle of beer on the wall—_

an ensign, a captain, and an intelligence officer are sinking to the bottom of the sea. there's a hatch, and a hand, and a game—no, it's a test, a trick, a question that she has to answer, to figure out in order to win, in order to be in charge (in control?) and do the right thing, right? that's the point, right? of this exercise, of this game?

but wait. rewind, override, rethink, restart—

a captain, a mother program, a comms officer, a detonations specialist, a project manager, and a lieutenant are all going to die in the cold, empty yawn of space. there’s a shuttle, and then a flight computer, and then a pulse beacon relay that of _course_ she hasn’t looked at, considered—it was a lot easier when all of her decisions came flash-frozen or canned, came predetermined from a manual or a memo and she _aches_ with it sometimes. with how easy it would be to get an answer, to be _told what to do_ and it’s just on the other end of the line—

and she knows, _god,_ does she know what would happen this time, exactly how it would play out if ET phoned home again, if she called command just to know someone else was on the other end of the line; she sees the stars mapped out all constellation-clear for her and lined up like orion’s belt, shiny like the gold foil logo on a condolence letter and bright like the future she was going to have, before she took a torpedo, before she started to flood—

what, exactly, was she supposed to learn?

“would you be so kind as to join me in my office?”

this isn't a game anymore.

 

_one bottle of beer—_

you’re starting to realize there’s a difference between in charge and in control. it’s taken one tragedy too many, one too many airlock funerals and now you can find your way to the old lab with your eyes closed, know which drawer has the body bags folded all in a row (there’s plenty for all of you and then some; goddard futuristics spared no expense). it’s all you can see now, black sweep and sharp crackle like medical-grade plastic as the power goes out and the comms die and eiffel is out there alone, _again;_ you can already hear the zipper slide and you flinch, knock into lovelace and pull back just as fast (a knee-jerk reaction, a reflex, lord knows you’ve had enough of those lately). you imagine eiffel halfway gone even as jacobi starts to speak, as a dot in the forever distance, careening into the cold and the dark like a shooting star, like a bullet—

you don’t want to kill anyone (else), aren't going to do it (yet) but here you are again, weak and helpless and _whining._ here you are, door clanging shut in your face and a gun that feels for all the world like dead weight set smooth in your palms like it’s a part of you now, a seamless gradient from steel to copper, to all that blood on your hands—

kepler turns to you and it strikes you how much jacobi _sounds_ like him just now _(“would you be so kind? am i understood? is there a problem?”)_ and how terribly little kepler sounds like himself.

he sounds like you; he sounds _scared._

“lieutenant—please tell me _you_ have a backup plan here?”

after all, it’s not the day to be a hero.

 

_take it down—_

he still stutters sometimes, still catches himself hanging on kepler’s every word, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye to see what comes next, to be _told what to do—_ the best part is that kepler had _trusted_ him, played his own game so well he’d fallen for it too, as much as jacobi had and isn’t that what they call love? mutual deception?

kepler’s face right now _almost_ makes it worth the way his vision still blurs every time he thinks he catches the curl of hair around the corner, the way his heartbeat in his ears is starting to sound like fingers on a keyboard or a pen tapped against the rim of an MIT mug. kepler’s face is just this side of priceless, a top-shelf speyside malt of disbelief and petty rage and a world without him in it is _almost_ worth living in one without her too.

when he says it, means it, they both draw a breath so sharp they damn near choke on it, and wouldn’t that just be so fucking easy? to yank the air from their lungs as quick and cool and sharp as a kiss in an airlock, as the snap of a safety turned off, of a comms panel keyboard under his fingertips but when has shit ever gone easy for him? the only thing that’s ever been easy was being a bad guy, but now it sits too loose on him, second skin too big because it was built for two and his allegro pulse is jackhammering in his ears. it's all part of the plan, down to the pistol in her grip and the look on kepler's face and the scales that are finally, finally tilting even. it's all part of _the_ plan but not _kepler's,_ because he—

well, he didn't need to know.

“my dearest lieutenant minkowski, if it’s not too much trouble—would you pretty please with sugar on top, shoot colonel kepler dead where he stands?”

it’s only right she get the honour.

 

_pass it around—_

massive head trauma for massive head trauma, that’s fair, right? that’s the parallel you were going for here, this cosmic joke, equivalent exchange, the eye for a hand for an entire life narrowed down to her smile at the end of a barrel, of how _sure_ she was—

for a joke, this isn’t funny.

part of you want minkowski to shoot you after all so that you'll finally _know—_ you haven’t let that go, not now, not yet, not when you’re right here right now getting revenge for a friend who may not even be _yours,_ who could have spent her last months alive with a real monster under her bed while jacobi, _this_ jacobi, could have let her best friend come to a rolling boil in a psi wave stew. alana maxwell may very well have died because she placed her life in the hands of an imposter, a traitor, a rotten spy who didn’t know her as well as he’d thought, who couldn’t call a goddamn bluff—

first shot, no bullet, and maxwell hands you a six-pack of creme soda while she tips her whole bag upside-down to look for her keys.

second shot, and the man coming up behind you drops like your father’s expectations; you wave a hand in the direction of her sniper’s nest as the lock on the door you’re headed for explodes into sparks.

third shot, and she grips your hand hard enough to grind bone as you cross the border into montana; kepler at the wheel says nothing but you watch her hold her breath past every church, past every two-bit town and rifle range.

fourth shot, and you’re half asleep on her couch, fingers in her hair as she tinkers with a circuit board instead of watching the movie, groaning with your face squashed into the cushion— _alana, pay attention, i put this on just for you, alana, alana—_  

alpha lima alpha november alpha, like a cadence, like your pulse in your throat or the click of minkowski’s gun or the roar of the engine in your ears—like shitty video games on a console with a cracked face, broken and busted after being dragged in a duffel from montana to civilization, like pizza with barbecue sauce _and_ ranch, like cold feet shoved against your legs in a shitty hotel—motel—rooftop—tent or the way she chewed on her hair when she took aim down a rifle scope or wrapped her fingers around the bruises he left to see how big his handprint was against hers and then poured you another fucking glass of water instead of a shot—

game over. no lives left. return to your last saved checkpoint; a bar and a glass of icy booze and a hand on your shoulder that burns like the brand you know it is, now.

you don’t know how to fix this.

“the way i see it, you’re the one who has to collect.”

but you’ve got a bet to win.

 

_no bottles of beer on the wall._

“minkow-minkowski—oh my god, you’re back! l-listen, i figured it out!”

“commander, will you—if it doesn’t work, or hell, maybe even if it does—tell everyone back home that—ah, i don’t know, all the stuff you tell people back home?”

“i don’t know what’s going to happen, but i—”

**Author's Note:**

> wow i was so late on this my brain is one huge scream


End file.
